The daymakers, p.23
The Daymakers, page 23
I had a little more money saved up this time, my allowance from my time on the tour, and I’d noticed another ten grand had gone into my bank account from Whitt, probably severance money. So I could put a deposit on a rental and maybe buy a cheap car. It was enough that I could survive for a bit without panicking while I found a job.
I purposefully hadn’t asked Shep what he was doing, because I was worried that it wouldn’t involve me. So I was burying my head in the sand and fortifying my walls. If he went back to the tour, I couldn’t go with him.
“Dreamer, it’s for you!” Shep called up the stairs. Probably Tobias. I still had to fix up his bill. I wondered if he’d let me take out a payment plan.
I grabbed my phone and took the stairs two at a time, already shouting my questions to my lawyer. “Tobias, does your firm take—”
I stopped dead on the bottom step. Standing in the tiny foyer were my guys.
Without their masks.
Their faces were just there, for me to see, and I couldn’t breathe.
Knight stepped forward first, his face twisted up into a huge grin. His eyes laughed at me, shining like onyx under the recessed lights. His nose had a little bump on it, and I could swear he had freckles. I wanted to kiss each and every one.
“Lottie.” It was all he said, but the way he said it made my heart threaten to burst from my chest. He grabbed me up into his arms and kissed me so completely that there was no room for doubt. There were just his arms and me, and nothing else mattered.
Well, nothing else but the men behind him. My eyes searched out Shep first, but as I met his gaze, he gave me an encouraging nod. I let myself relax into Knight’s hold and finally breathe. I wasn’t going to second guess why they were here. I was just going to be happy that they were.
Someone shoved Knight, which resulted in us rocking from side to side, because he refused to loosen his hold. “I missed you so fucking much,” he whispered in my ear, then grunted. “Not the kidneys, asshole.”
He stepped back, letting me go, and then Hero was there. Poet, too. Fuck, they were as beautiful as I thought they’d be. Hero’s broad face was stretched tight with a smile, his eyes shining as he looked at me. Poet had a longer, more angular face, with those high cheekbones that I’d felt beneath my hands so many times. They hugged me between them, and I melted into their warmth, their security, tears welling in my eyes. I’d wanted them so damn bad, and here they were.
“You aren’t wearing your masks,” I sniffed, and that was when I realized I was actually already crying.
Poet nuzzled my hair. “We don’t need to hide anything from you.”
Hero wrapped his arms around us both. “I’m sorry it took so long for us to get here. It won’t happen again.”
As much as the promise made butterflies alight in my stomach, I wouldn’t hold him to his promise. How could I? They were some of the biggest names in the music industry, and I was a glorified street rat. A toy to play with, but not to keep.
My eyes met Royal’s from between the bodies of his two bandmates, and just the sight of him stole the air from my lungs. He was beautiful. He was…
“Holy shit,” I breathed, because I knew who he was. Everyone knew who he was. He’d been on the covers of shitty tabloid magazines since he was a baby.
“Rourke Stokes. It’s nice to meet you, Toy,” he said softly, and the guys stepped back so I could make my way to him. He wouldn’t come to me; I knew that. Royal wasn’t the type of person to make the first move, or even the second. But some part of me knew that him being here, as the man he was and not the persona he played, meant more than taking three steps forward.
He’d already made a leap of blind faith on me. I put out my hand, grasping his. “Charlotte Lochrin. The pleasure is all mine.”
He chuckled darkly, tugging my hand until I was pulled tight into his body. “It will be.” He gripped my face and kissed me, his tongue pushing into my mouth like he was dying for the taste of me.
I was kissing Rourke fucking Stokes. Teenage me would be dying right now, if she wasn’t already dead and buried six feet below. I had no idea how long he kissed me, but by the time we pulled away, the rest of the guys were gone from the foyer. I could hear them chatting in the kitchen, and I gripped Royal’s hand as I dragged him after me. There was no way I was letting him go, now that I’d just gotten them back.
The guys were drinking the last of the soda in the fridge, taking up too much space in the tiny kitchen. My eyes feasted on them, like I’d been starving for far too long.
“What are you guys doing here? Don’t you have a concert in…” I racked my brain for their tour schedule. “Baltimore?”
Knight nodded. “We do, but we’ve got a couple of days and we wanted to spend them with you.” My heart did a little flip at that. “Plus, the time for masks and subterfuge is gone. The tour hasn’t been the same without you. We want you to come back. No blindfold this time.”
A ball of anxiety sat heavy in my gut. “Guys, I can’t. What about the label? Your contracts?”
Hero leaned back against the counter, his eyes running across my face. “We got so caught up in ourselves—no one’s asked if you even want to come back. Whether you feel… anything for us. I know you weren’t looking for strings and commitment, and that’s okay. If it’s about the money—”
I shook my head vigorously. “Fuck the money. Honestly, I don’t want a cent from you guys.” I took a deep breath, because I was about to lay my shit bare for them all, and hope they didn’t run the other way. “I’m not going to lie and say it didn’t start out about the money, because it absolutely did. It was about the money for a long time; I wanted the security it provided.
“But if this whole fucking thing with the charges and sitting in a jail cell has taught me anything, it’s that it wasn’t the almighty dollar that had my back in there. It was you guys. It hasn’t been the idea of the money I’ve missed the last couple of weeks—it was you four.” I looked over at Shep and winked. “Though Shep has been my rock through the whole thing, so if anyone has a problem with that, they can take it up with me.”
Royal barked out a laugh. “Easy, Killer. We’ve known that Shep’s had it bad for you for ages. We don’t care. Shep is part of us. And so are you.”
My chest felt so full, I was sure I was going to burst like an overfilled water balloon. Nodding furiously, I slid back into Royal’s arms. Some things were worth more than money; this was one of them.
Getting to know the guys without the subterfuge and masks was a trippy experience. I realized how much I knew about their personalities, about their preferences, but it was all surface stuff. I hadn’t truly known them at all.
Like the fact they all lived in Brooklyn Heights together when they weren’t touring. Or little things, like the meanings of all their tattoos, which were so entwined with their histories that they couldn’t have told me about them and kept the anonymity clause.
Or that Knight loved cats, so much so that they had three, who even had a designated babysitter while the guys were on tour, and he regularly Facetimed them. He showed me pictures, like they were his babies. I hadn’t picked Knight as a cat guy; he had such Golden Retriever energy.
Or that Poet ran a foundation in his father’s memory, helping underprivileged kids get into karting, so they could eventually pursue motorsports, which had been a rich person’s sport for far too long.
Hero and Royal owned a bar in Brooklyn, though it was managed by someone else. It was known to host open mic nights that music execs sometimes frequented.
The whole band, plus Shep, even owned a couple of stud horses on a farm in Colorado.
But deeper than the superficial things was who they really were, which hadn’t changed.
I did discover reasons for small quirks I’d already noticed. The reason Poet and Royal went to baseball games all the time was because Poet’s godfather had been a professional ball player. He’d stepped up when Poet’s dad had died in the car accident, becoming a male role model not just to Poet, but for all the guys, who’d had pretty shitty role models as a whole.
I found out that Hero had spent every holiday with Poet and his mom, ever since Hero’s grandfather had passed away and he was no longer forced into going back to the “mausoleum of darkness.” Direct quote.
They told me all this over pizza, lounging around in the living room, and I tried to mesh the idea of the masked men I knew with the very real people in front of me.
“So, do I call you guys by your real names, or do you prefer your stage names?” I sat on Hero’s lap, and he kept rubbing his cheek against mine. Even though it was a little scratchy, I couldn’t get enough. To be able to kiss every inch of his face and see it at the same time felt almost decadent now.
“Baby, you can call me whatever you want. Especially when you come.” He grinned. “Oh, Curtis…” he said in a falsetto imitation of my voice.
I couldn’t help but lean closer, breathing, “Mmm, Curtis, right there,” into his ear, making him shiver beneath me. His arms tightened around me, and he growled.
Royal cleared his throat. “We usually just call each other by our stage names. They’re basically nicknames now anyway, and it stops us slipping up in public. But I’m not sure that’ll matter much longer.”
All the good feelings eked out of me at the reminder of Tom and his threats. I mightn’t be going to jail anymore, but he was still threatening the guys.
Hero’s hand ran up and down my spine, doing battle against the tension suddenly stiffening my body. “I’m sorry. I promise, I’ll keep it on the downlow. I was thinking about moving to North Carolina or somewhere under the radar, and maybe Tom will think you’ve kept your word.” I tried to shake off the melancholy that threatened to swamp me at the thought that I might only see them every now and then. It was better than nothing.
Royal leaned forward. “Look at me, Charlotte.” I met his ethereal blue eyes, and the intensity on his face made my chest tighten. “I mean it with every fiber in my body when I say fuck Tom. Fuck his manipulative, narcissitic, abuser ass if he thinks he’s going to win. Because I would’ve burned this whole band down before I let a little weasel like that treat me and the people I love like puppets.”
I warned my wildly beating heart that he didn’t mean me. He meant the guys, who he loved like brothers. But the look in his eyes was screaming something at me that I didn’t dare hope for.
Shep’s whole body went taut. “What have you guys done?”
Knight leaned back against the couch, his arms crossed over his chest. “What needed to be done.”
Well, that’s ominous.
THIRTY-SIX
HERO
I curled around Charlotte in a hotel bed in Baltimore, and I knew at that moment that this was the right decision. Because I might be in love with Charlotte Lochrin. It was a seed of feeling in my chest, and if I examined it, it would be labeled with a capital L.
She’d protested for the last forty-eight hours about our plan, and occasionally, I’d see guilt creep into her eyes. She thought she was sinking our careers, but really, she was just a catalyst.
Exhaustion had been creeping in for a long time now. Before this tour had even started, the physical toll of keeping our identities hidden was a never-ending stress. We could never really relax, even when we weren’t touring. I was done, and if it meant I got to keep the woman in my arms, then all the better.
Shep, surprisingly, had taken the whole thing in his stride, going into manager mode. He went over the contracts with the label, talked to the lawyers, liaised with an independant PR company to deal with the fallout. Not once did he try to talk us out of it, even though it could possibly sink everything we’d worked for.
It had been Royal’s dad who’d told us to chase happiness, because there wouldn’t be bright stage lights to keep us warm at the end. He’d stared hard at his son when he’d said that, but Royal’s jaw had been so tight, you could have cut cheese on the sharp edges. It’d take more than a few sage words of advice to mend the rift between those two, but this was a step in the right direction.
Roman Stokes had given us the number of his PR guy, and if you took into account that Roman was still a respected rocker after half the shit he’d pulled in his career, the guy was obviously the best.
Soon, I’d have to wake up and get ready for the interview that would change the trajectory of our lives, but for now, I wanted to spend a moment holding my girl, keeping her safe between my body and that of the guy I loved.
Poet was still sleeping softly, and I watched his lips twitch as if he was having an imaginary conversation in his dreams. He was so fucking beautiful, and I wanted to tell the world he was mine—Charlotte, too. The PR guy had suggested we should just do one career-altering revelation at a time, though.
It was fine. My relationships were no one’s business anyway. The fans, the tabloids and the label could either get on board or fuck right off.
I was pretty sure Jenny, Poet’s mom, already knew. We hadn’t overtly said anything, but she knew her son. She knew me. She’d definitely guessed. She was the only person outside of our group that mattered. She’d been the only decent parent we had between us, though Joseph, Poet’s godfather, came a close second.
Joseph had proposed to Poet’s mom as soon as he retired from baseball. He’d told us, when he asked for permission, that he hadn’t wanted Jenny to be tied to another sportsman, waiting at home while the person who was meant to be her other half traveled the country, playing with his balls. He’d wanted her to have the chance to marry a nice accountant or something. But when he retired and Jenny was still single, he saw it as a sign.
That had been an awkward, kind of tense moment, when the man Poet had thought of as a father figure—his father’s best friend—had wanted to marry his mom. But in the end, he was a soft soul who wanted his mother to be happy, and clinging to a ghost wasn’t any kind of way to live life.
“You’re thinking really hard,” Poet said softly.
I nodded once. “Just going over things in my head.”
“Reservations?” He didn’t need to specify. We both knew what was going to happen today, and we’d prepared for it.
“None.”
Poet’s hand covered mine where it rested on Charlotte’s hip. “Me either.”
“Me neither,” she whispered, her eyes fluttering open with a yawn. She snuggled further into Poet’s chest, and he kissed the top of her head reverently. If I wasn’t ready to name that kernel of feeling in my chest, Poet was the exact opposite. Love shone from his face like a beacon.
“Good morning, gorgeous,” he whispered, leaning in to kiss her.
She gave him a chaste kiss back, then shook her head. “I’ve got morning death breath.”
He rubbed his nose against hers. “I don’t care.” He kissed her deeply, pushing her back into my body, and I stroked my hands up and down her sides. I wanted to kiss every inch of her creamy skin, bury my cock inside her, or maybe inside Poet while he was inside her. Maybe with Knight or Royal there, too. I wasn’t sure if Shep would be open to sharing, but we had time to figure that out.
This situation was absolutely batshit insane, but I knew that Sampson Rubio—who I’d called a couple of weeks ago about a lawyer—was in some kind of alternative polyamorous relationship. If he could do it, surely we could. I mean, those guys weren’t as famous as The Daymakers were, or maybe even as famous as Rourke Stokes was individually, but they’d spent their own fair share of time in the tabloids. They weren’t unknowns, and they made it work.
So maybe we could too.
Lottie started to make that soft noise that always went straight to my dick, and if I didn’t stop this soon, we were going to be late for the biggest interview of our career. I kissed the back of her neck and tightened my arms around her ribs. Hoisting her up over my body and onto the other side of the bed, I ignored their protests.
“Save the celebrations for later, you two. The alarm’s going off and it’s time to get ready. Today’s an important day.” I felt like a dick, but one of us had to be. Otherwise, I’d be buried deep in one of them within the next twenty minutes.
Lottie smiled happily at me. Contentment looked good on her. It lit her up from the inside, making me just want to bask in it. Soon.
“I’ll make coffee and make sure everyone else is awake,” she said, rolling from the bed and stretching. I groaned as the lines of her naked body transfixed me. She looked over her shoulder and winked, the little minx.
Happiness bubbled up inside me, and laughter burst from my lips. “Get out of here before I spank that perfect ass.”
She gave it a little shake, throwing on a hotel robe and disappearing into the suite’s living room. I slumped back against the pillows and tried to breathe away my erection. I was going to have to paint the walls of the shower to get rid of this boner.
Poet was smiling softly, and I looked over at him. “Love you, Moss.”
His smile turned into a beam of happiness. “Not as much as I love you, Curtis,” he replied, and as always, hearing him say my real name made it seem like so much more. “I love her too, you know.”
I kissed his cheek. “I know. How could you not?”
At this point, it seemed inevitable. Lottie had transformed us all.
I’d suggested that Lottie still wear her mask when we went out, but she shook her head. “No. I’m not going to spend the rest of my time with you guys hiding,” she replied stubbornly.
Now, as we sat in hair and makeup on the set of a very popular morning show, we were putting on our masks for the very last time. Shep had made all the makeup artists sign NDAs, just so no one pipped us to our grand reveal. But in less than an hour, it wouldn’t matter. We would be free of the masks, unless we chose to continue wearing them at shows.
